Lady of the English (32 page)

She did not ask him if he had ever done this before because she did not want to know. “No, see, they are not. You are deft when you choose to be.” She gave a little laugh and tried not to flinch as he accidentally tickled her. “There.” Easing the gown off her shoulders, she stepped out of it.

Very gently he removed her crown so that he could unpin the veil from her long, ash-brown hair; but then he replaced it on her head and took a backstep to look at her. “I have never seen anything so beautiful,” he said softly.

Adeliza stood very still beneath his scrutiny. His swift breathing and flushed complexion kindled a glow in the pit of her belly.

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“I am glad you asked them all to leave,” he said. “Because otherwise I would not have seen you like this.” He came closer again, cupped her face using one hand, and kissed her. His lips were warm and she could feel the heat and strength of his body. It was a good thing, she thought. Women’s humours were known to be cold and to sap a man’s strength. They needed a man’s heat to complete them, and if one’s mate was not sufficiently hot in his humours, then his seed might prove ineffectual. She had read every medical treatise she could while trying to conceive with Henry. She gave herself up to the kiss, and it was pleasant, as was the strength of his arms; yet he held her as delicately as he had held the crown, and she felt protected and secure.

With great ceremony he left her and, going to the bed, drew back the sheets, opening the covers for her like a gentleman.

When she was settled, he sat on his own side and turned discreetly away to remove his clothing. He had broad shoulders and the relaxed loose muscles of a quiescent lion. Nothing like Henry, who had been stocky with a hard paunch and age-crêped flesh. This was a young man, virile and eager. He turned towards her, and she almost gasped at the sight of his broad chest and the stripe of hair feathering down his body and curling at his groin. Very virile and eager indeed. She did not know whether to avert her eyes, or stare in wonderment. And then the sheets fell across and she was rescued from her dilemma.

“I have a sin to confess, if sin it be,” he said as he leaned towards her.

“Then you should see a priest,” Adeliza whispered. Fascinated by the sight of his smooth, bare skin, she reached out to touch his shoulder and arm. His muscles had the gleam and definition of youth. Her fingertips encountered the glossy dark coils at his nape and her senses began to swim.

“A priest could not help me,” he said. “I want you to be my confessor and listen to what I have to say.”

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“What if I cannot grant you absolution?” She wound her index finger round a cluster of his curls.

“Then I will be lost.” He set his palm at her waist. “I confess I have loved you and desired you for a long time. You are so beautiful. I confess to envy of the king your husband even while I knew you were as far beyond me as the stars. And now I have you, I cannot believe my good fortune. How many men wish for the stars and have their wish granted? You shine, and I am dazzled.”

She traced the outline of his lips with her fingertips. Such words were gems. Henry had never spoken thus to her. The times they had bedded had been a matter of business. Henry’s preference was for buxom, big-breasted women who looked fecund and ripe.

“You are so slender and small,” he said, his eyes following the path of his hand up and down her flank. “I fear that if I breathe out too hard, I will blow you away.”

“I am strong enough to bear your weight,” she said, feeling as if she would dissolve within the intensity of his stare. “I absolve you.” She rolled into his arms and set her lips against his collar bone and hid her face. Above her, she heard him hiss through his teeth.

With Henry the act of procreation had often been uncomfortable. His needs had been bullish and practical. He expected her to please him and for her the experience had been a duty—

one that she had performed gladly because it was God’s will and her responsibility as a wife, but she had never understood why it should put a sparkle in people’s eyes and lead them into sin. Indeed, sometimes it had been so painful, she had wept into the pillow afterwards, knowing it was all her fault. Men of science said that for a woman to conceive, she must release her seed, and the outward sign that such a release had happened was that she would shudder in a crisis of pleasure. Adeliza had 251

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never experienced such a thing with Henry, but now, tasting Will’s skin, feeling it so supple and warm under her fingers, hearing his soft groan, she began to shiver with feelings that were utterly delicious.

She wanted to explore his body, and he was equally keen to investigate hers. “Mine,” he whispered as he cupped her breasts and thumbed her nipples, then bent his head to stroke them with his tongue. “My queen now.” She arched towards him and gasped. She had never imagined that a man’s mouth and hands could work such alchemy on her body. It was like a poem; it was like the Song of Songs. The sensuality, the beautiful tension. And the act itself, for which she had learned to hold herself rigid against the pain, was a fluid thing of give and take, although she had never felt so full in her life. He took his weight on his arms so that he would not crush her and he did not lunge with the full force of his body but treated her with delicacy, and he called her his queen again, and his light and his joy.

She cried out beneath him and shuddered in his arms, overcome by ripple upon ripple of sensation. She clutched him, and felt him stiffen against her and buck. That part of the act was familiar to her, and yet at the same time it was wondrously different. And still he held his weight off her while he dipped his head into her shoulder, and gasped for breath as if he had run across a field in his mail shirt. After a moment, he withdrew from her and fell on to his side.

She drew her legs together and bent her knees towards him and he reached for her hand, kissing her knuckles and then her palm. “That was very fine,” he said with a broad smile in his voice. “Very fine indeed.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was.” She was still assimilating what had happened and marvelling. Small, pleasant aftershocks continued to undulate through her body. Earlier she had watched people 252

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laughing and had wondered if they were happy, and what it felt like. She had wondered what was wrong with her, but now she thought she knew a little of what they did. If the wonderful sensations she had just experienced meant that her body had released its seed to join with his, then the first part had succeeded. Perhaps this would be the time. Maybe now, with this new man and marriage, God would favour her with a big belly. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself in that condition, proud and fecund.

He left the bed and went to investigate the food and drink that had been left out for them under a cloth. Through half-closed eyes, Adeliza studied his loose-limbed grace and was again reminded of a proud male lion.

He brought her wine in a green glass, and a platter of delicate rose-water pastries, presenting them in a white napkin. Adeliza smiled at the incongruous contrast. He was so big, and yet he could be so precise and delicate too.

“We must make the best use of this time together to come to know each other,” he said. “It won’t be long before we have a full nursery to disturb us.”

Adeliza flushed and wondered if he had said it deliberately, or whether it was of the moment and his own needs. He was a newly created earl, and an heir would be high on his list of priorities. “Indeed, I hope it is true, my husband,” she said, and the last two words were as sweet as the rose-water pastry on her tongue, because of what he had given her now, and what might be in the future.

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Twenty-nine

Argentan, May 1139

Matilda watched with a mingling of amusement and sadness as Robert the hauberk-maker covered Henry’s russet-red hair with a linen bonnet, and then fitted over it a child-sized coif of lightweight mail rivets. There was one too for Hamelin, Henry’s half-brother.

“I’m a great knight now.” Drawing his toy sword, Henry struck a pose. He was wearing a miniature version of the quilted tunic sported by the serjeants and men-at-arms.

“Indeed you are.”

“Just like my papa.”

Matilda quirked her brow, but forbore to comment. One day her son was going to be greater than his father, and his grandfather. She intended to make sure of that.

“I’m going to be just like Papa too,” Hamelin said. He was two years taller than Henry and sturdy. His hair was not as vibrant as his younger brother’s and his eyes were a wide-set mottled hazel like his mother’s. Matilda had accepted him into her household without malice. The child would be what he was moulded into. A companion, help-meet, and loyal military servant for Henry was her intention for him.

“But I’ll be the duke and the king and you’ll be my vassal,”

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Henry said. “You will have to promise to obey me and fight for me, and I will give you lands and gifts in return.”

Hamelin frowned. “What sort of gifts?”

Henry waved his hand. “Castles, and swords, and horses, and armour.”

Hamelin fingered the coif and the green glints shone in his eyes. “I want a big black horse,” he said. “Like Papa’s.”

They ran off to play their game of capturing a pretend castle and were joined by some of her brother Robert’s younger sons.

Matilda pursed her lips. She would have to watch Henry and quash any inclination to profligacy. She did not want her son growing up to become a weak man at the mercy of barons who would milk him dry and then desert him. He needed to learn how to be shrewd and build affinity, and how to divide and conquer as necessary. She curled her lip, thinking of Stephen.

He had no notion of how to rule a kingdom. All the wealth her father had accumulated was pouring out of the coffers like blood from a slashed artery as he strove to hold together the factions at court. Being a king was not about pleasing people.

It was about controlling them.

A messenger was ushered into her presence and, kneeling, presented her with a bundle of parchments. Her eyes lit on the seal of Ulger, bishop of Angers, as she dismissed the messenger.

This was the news she had been waiting for, and her breathing quickened. The bishop had been in Rome at the Lateran Council, petitioning to have Stephen overthrown. Matilda had sent rich gifts to the delegation along with her pleas: reliquaries, a gold pyx, boxes of frankincense, and a robe woven with cloth of gold and embroidered with rubies from the treasure store she had brought with her from Germany. Stephen had sent his own delegation there to argue his case under the auspices of the dean of sees and she knew he would have sent similar gifts and left nothing to chance. She read rapidly, repeating the words to 255

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herself. It was written in Latin, in which she was fluent. As she read, her cheeks began to flame and she felt so sick with rage that she heaved.

“Sister?” Robert, who had entered the room in the messenger’s wake, hastened over to her. “What is it?”

“Have you seen Stephen’s argument?” she choked. “Have you seen why he says I have no right to be queen of England?”

She thrust the parchment at him. “He argues that my parents were never legally married—that my mother was a nun, a bride of Christ, who had taken the veil! I expected him to make much of the lie that my father absolved men of their vows to me on his deathbed, but this…this reeks of the gutter!

Yes, she dwelt in a nunnery before she wed him, but she did not take vows.”

Robert read the letter and his expression grew grim. “That is a desperate argument,” he said with contempt. “The marriage was performed by Archbishop Anselm, and he would never have sanctioned it if he believed for one moment your mother had taken the veil.” Robert read further and then said bleakly,

“The pope has upheld Stephen’s claim to the crown.”

She controlled her anger. “I did not expect any different from Innocent.” She gestured to the letter. “Many of his cardinals disagreed with his decision. It is they we must foster, and we shall look to the next pope for a better outcome.

Innocent is an old man and not robust. This only makes me the more determined. All the time my father was heaping largesse and privilege on Stephen, he was fostering a viper in his bosom.”

“Stephen would not have done it without advice from his inner council,” Robert said. “He allows men of stronger will to govern him, and in turn they fight among themselves over who is going to be the power behind the throne. The Beaumonts are trying to undermine the bishop of Winchester’s influence 256

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with Stephen. You know how much our cousin wanted to be an archbishop, but they’ve stopped him in his tracks.”

Matilda exhaled with bleak amusement. Cousin Henry had supported Stephen all the way to the throne of England, expecting to become his chief adviser and archbishop of Canterbury in due course, but his plans had been thwarted by the Beaumont brothers Waleran and Robert. It was their candidate, Theobald of Bec, who had been elected to the arch-bishopric. Adeliza had written that Bishop Henry was fuming at what he saw as an insulting slight.

“So you think he can be further weaned away from Stephen?”

Matilda asked, thoughtful now. Her rage had become a dark sediment in her blood. “I would not trust Henry of Blois further than I could throw him in all those glittering robes of his, but he could be useful to us.”

“I will write to him in general terms,” Robert replied. “A little diplomacy to grease the wheels and some flattery to soothe ruffled feathers will not come amiss, and may even be of great benefit.”